3 ideas
| 20921 | How can we state relativism of sweet and sour, if they have no determinate nature? [Theophrastus] |
| Full Idea: How could what is bitter for us be sweet and sour for others, if there is not some determinate nature for them? | |
| From: Theophrastus (On the Senses [c.321 BCE], 70) | |
| A reaction: The remark is aimed at Democritus. This is part of the general question of how you can even talk about relativism, without attaching stable meanings to the concepts employed. |
| 7076 | Mill wondered if he would be happy if all his aims were realised, and answered no [Mill, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Mill, in his crisis of 1827, asked himself whether he would be happy if all his objects in life were realised, and had to answer that he would not. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (Autobiography [1870]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: The reply is either that happiness is in the striving, or that his aims in life were wrong, or that happiness is impossible. It seems to contradict Kant's definition (Idea 1452). |
| 5994 | Is the cosmos open or closed, mechanical or teleological, alive or inanimate, and created or eternal? [Robinson,TM, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The four major disputes in classical cosmology were whether the cosmos is 'open' or 'closed', whether it is explained mechanistically or teleologically, whether it is alive or mere matter, and whether or not it has a beginning. | |
| From: report of T.M. Robinson (Classical Cosmology (frags) [1997]) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A nice summary. The standard modern view is closed, mechanistic, inanimate and non-eternal. But philosophers can ask deeper questions than physicists, and I say we are entitled to speculate when the evidence runs out. |